


Valar Dohaeris

by gaytriangle



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: 8.03, 8.03 Spoilers, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Coping, Drabble, Gen, Season 8, its really just a fic for dealing with that episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-29
Updated: 2019-04-29
Packaged: 2020-02-10 01:10:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18649861
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaytriangle/pseuds/gaytriangle
Summary: After the battle, after the restoration, after some weddings and too many funerals, after after after-After all that, there is a bard walking Winterfells walls, and he might have a lesson to teach Jaime.





	Valar Dohaeris

Of all the people to survive in Winterfell, the bard hadn’t been pegged as one of them. 

It felt a little bit like a betrayal of who they were meant to be, to listen to him. He called himself Bael, and he could sing southron ballads as easily as Free Folk laments and Dornish jigs. When they buried the dead, he seemed to dance over the graves as easily as Jenny danced over her old stones and the tune danced over his lips. 

The bard, fingers undamaged by battle, had been the one to carve too many names into the stone. Jorah, Theon, Lyanna, Eddison, Gilly, Samwell, Grey Worm, Melisandre, the list went on and on and still he carved. It should have been Gendrys job, but he was in no hurry to lift another hammer. Not after the last time he dropped one, and his hand with it. 

There was one good thing to come out of the battle. The rations, meagre for a huge army, suited their reduced one quite well. Bael ate handsomely, but always last, always after playing a full round of cheery tunes to lift their spirits. They had drink and dead a plenty, but far too little joy. The Bear and the Maiden Fair made frequent appearances whenever Ser Tarth and Ser... Tarth, also, apparently, deigned to dine outside their rooms. He sang hymns over those the Maester couldn’t save, to the old gods, the new, and the lord of light. He sang Jenny’s song, each daybreak, as steady as a cocks crow. He sang his own song, Baels song, at least once through supper. There was only one song he refused to sing. 

“You see, lass,” he told a pretty lordlings daughter when she gasped out the request through a flood of tears, “I won’t sing about Castamere. Any other song, your choice, and I’ll sing it for pittance.”

This, naturally enough, filtered back around the castle. Gossip was rife anywhere, but especially in a place where misery still clung to corners like particularly stubborn spiderwebs. It eventually circulated to the surviving Lannister’s- err, those that kept the name and otherwise. The sole member of his house that still bore its name was quite busy, arranging with the Dragon Queen for custody of his sisters ashes. Ser Tarth, however, had nothing but time while he and his wife healed. Bael was not a hard man to find. 

“If you’re coming to me to sing your fathers anthem, I’m afraid I’ve just lost my tongue,” said the bard. His blue eyes were always fixed on the distance, always a shade off setting Jaimes nerves alight. Briennes eyes were sapphires, not this mans mockery of ice. That was not a nice shade of blue for him anymore. 

“No one comes through battle without peculiarities. Who gave you this one in particular?” Jaime was exhausted, and not in the pleasant way he was finding himself tired out by his wife. This was the tiredness of a lifetime picking up Tywin and Cersei Lannister’s fucking messes. His fingers ached, and his head too, once he saw the bards scarred face smile. 

“Nothing like that, Ser, nothing to do with your family. Only- well, the Reynes wept when the day was lost, did they not?”

“I suppose they did.”

“See, Ser Jaime, I won’t play a song for extinction. The way I see it, those names I carve, they’re preparing rooms for us in the Seven Heavens and torturing the Night King in the Seven Hells. Nothing to weep about.”

Jaime started at Bael. He looked half familiar, with a scraggly black beard and a set to his eyes that almost looked like Jon Snow- Stark- Targaryen’s. “Who are you, to sing wisdom at us, after a day like this?”

Bael laughed, and clapped Jaime on the shoulder. “Is there a better day for wisdom? Don’t worry so much, Tarth. Lions and wolves have this much in common: ‘always land on our feet.” 

The Bard slipped over one of the walls, and was gone by the time Jaime roused to follow him. His song hung in the air. For the first time, it filled Jaime with something other than dread.

**Author's Note:**

> Does Bael the Bard is Benjen Stark? Idk. I just needed a character to tell me, no matter how much it sucks, that it’s going to be okay.


End file.
